


if i could fix you, you wouldn't have to ask

by swimthewholeriogrande



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Boys In Love, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:38:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimthewholeriogrande/pseuds/swimthewholeriogrande
Summary: Jack is sometimes afraid but never alone.





	if i could fix you, you wouldn't have to ask

**Author's Note:**

> title from you wouldn't have to ask by bad books

_Jack's running. He's not fast enough, ever, and the Refuge is too packed and cramped with glazed-over kids to get enough room to breathe. They're in the corridors, packed in the bunks, their hands red with bleach, and Snyder is coming for him. Snyder is always coming for him._

_He'll kill Jack this time; Jack knows he will. His vision is failing as strong hands crush his neck and he can't believe that this dark cramped corridor, this unfairly endless hall full of soon-to-be-ghost kids, is the last thing he's ever gonna see. You're dead, boy. You're dead you're dead you're -_

The scream rips out of his throat like its taking one of his lungs with him and he bolts upright, blind in the dark. The body beside him flinches and yelps in shock and Jack's chest is heaving, no oxygen, no blood in his body.

He is twenty-four years old. He is twenty four years old, but he wakes up with the mind of a sixteen-year-old who'll never reach twenty-four at the rate he's going at. Jack's fingers slip over his throat, pressing hard at the rings of cartilage like he'll find an answer between them - until they're replaced by thinner, longer fingers, prying his hands away.

"Jackie, Jackie."

The words flood uninvited from his raw mouth. "I never stole anything, I don't wanna go -"

"You're not going anywhere." Davey is lighting the lamp, the buttery yellow light bouncing off the sheen on Jack's face. "You're with me."

Jack feels hot and drowned and not-present. "I's sorry, sir, I ain't got it -" The rough accent he'd shaken only comes back in the dark, when he's in the body of a teenager with something to prove; every breath is acid. "I mean, I said -"

It takes five more minutes of incoherent babbling before Jack is twenty-four again. By that point Davey has him on his lap, Jack's thighs on either side of Davey's waist, and his face is hidden in Davey's neck. Davey smells like the bedsheets twisted around them; the thin sleep-shirt he sleeps in is knotted on Jack's fingers.

Jack whines, a high animal note. "M'sorry." His skin is slick with the remnants of panic, sweat-soaked and untouchable, but Davey just tightens his grip and hauls Jack's trembling form closer to his chest.

"There's no need to be sorry." His voice is soft and invites no argument. "Jackie, you're shaking so hard."

"M'sorry." Jack says again, but it's half a joke this time and Davey huffs in sad amusement. Jack is more cold now than afraid; he reaches behind and pulls the blanket over them. He never had a blanket of his own before he and Davey moved in here.

"Back to sleep." Davey's voice is a prayer, and Jack is drifting; he cuts his teeth on the silver starlight in that voice. "I'll keep you safe."


End file.
